The U.S. military depends heavily on its space-based assets, and perhaps the most important component of those capabilities are the military communications satellites that allow global command and control of combat forces.
MILSATCOM “is the vital backbone of how the U.S. provides military superiority,” Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., told a Capitol Hill briefing July 24. But, “if we lose communications, we’re in big trouble. We can’t fight as well,” added Lamborn, whose district includes the headquarters of the Air Force and Army Space Commands and the Air Force facility that controls most of the military communications satellites.
In his opening remarks, Lamborn praised the presented by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), which analyzed the value of MILSATCOM and the threats to that asset from potential adversaries and from the growing budget constraints.
The CSBA report, “The Future of MILSATCOM,” warned that the Cold War-era confidence that the United States and the Soviet Union would not attack each other’s space assets — except in an all-out nuclear war — no longer holds.
The result is that “U.S. space systems, and military satellite communications systems in particular, have critical vulnerabilities in conventional warfare. … From the perspective of other nations, U.S. military space systems are weapon systems and space is a domain of warfare that can and will be contested,” the report said.
The threats include kinetic attacks, such as the anti-satellite rocket China demonstrated in destroying one of its own weather satellites in 2007, and electronic jamming and cyber disruptions, which are within the capabilities of many nations and even non-state actors such as international terrorists.
Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies at CSBA and author of the report, described the range of defenses that the military could employ to protect its space assets, but noted that adopting those expensive measures for future satellites could be difficult with the reduced defense budgets under sequestration.
“As the threat increases, the resources to address them are declining,” Harrison said during his presentation on Capitol Hill.
Satellites can be protected by adding a system to destroy an attacking missile, or make it “hardened” against electronic attack, Harrison said. Maintaining communications capability despite attacks can be enhanced by orbiting additional satellites, dispersing the capabilities across several spacecraft, putting military communications capabilities on commercial satellites or having replacement payloads ready for launch, he added.
All of those are expensive and would be “on the wrong side of the cost-imposing strategy” because the offensive weapons are much cheaper, Harrison said.
Satellite capability also could be replaced by using manned or unmanned aircraft or ground facilities as relay stations, but those have much shorter range and must operate in uncontested areas, he said.
Harrison provided six recommendations on ways the military could address the dual challenges of increased threat and reduced resources.
The primary recommendation was to adopt three tiers of protection, with the most critical communications highly protected, less important systems given less protection and routine communications unprotected.
Another recommendation, tied in with the strategic rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, is to invite allies and partners to share the expense of orbiting MILSATCOM and sharing the capabilities.
He also recommended avoiding new starts, which consume time and money, by buying more proven systems and making better use of competition to restrain cost.
And Harrison recommended consolidating all MILSATCOM programs and budgets in one service, which would reduce costly duplication and improve synchronization of capabilities. As an example of the problems that could address, he said the Mobile User Objective System satellite that the Navy recently launched cannot use all of its capabilities because the Navy does not have enough ground terminals to receive the data from the satellite.
Harrison said the Air Force would be the most likely candidate to control all of MILSATCOM because it already manages most of the space assets. The Air Force has advocated that for years, but has been opposed by the Army and the Navy.